


Assumed

by Septembers_coda



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Crying Castiel, First Kiss, Human Castiel, Hurt Castiel, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Schmoop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-01
Updated: 2014-01-01
Packaged: 2018-01-07 02:09:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1114270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Septembers_coda/pseuds/Septembers_coda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel is overwhelmed by the experience of being human. Dean can't learn to use his words... but maybe he doesn't have to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Assumed

Cas shivered. He was _cold,_ yet another human thing he would never get used to. Especially in a warm room, wrapped in a sweater, with the heat vent blowing directly on him—why couldn’t he get warm?

“You lost some blood,” Dean said gruffly as he came in from the kitchen, and Cas realized he’d voiced his last thought aloud. “Pretty nasty cut you got. That could do it.” Dean handed him an art deco mug. Steam curled out of it, and it warmed Cas’s hands, but the core of ice in him was untouched. It _hurt,_ a pain that had nothing to do with his physical wound,and the pain was spreading through his whole torso, swelling in his throat and choking him…

“Cas! Hey! Whoa!” Dean shouted, and Cas hissed in pain… the mug clattered to the table, spilling its scalding contents over Cas’s hands… more pain; the sensation in this frail human form indescribable, infinitely more threatening than the worst torment ever visited upon him when he’d had his grace…

“Shit! C’mere, Cas. Get over here. Jesus. You were supposed to sip it, not wear it.” He dragged Cas hurriedly to the sink at the sideboard, in this lounge-like room in the Men of Letters bunker.

Dean turned on the water, ice-cold, on Cas’s scalded hands. Cas whimpered, hating the helpless sound. The pain, the conflicting emotions… he could not sort the pain in his shoulder from that in his hands from that in his heart, the scalding heat of burned skin, the shocking cold of the water and inside his chest, the real pain and the spiritual pain and Dean touching him, Dean kicking him out of the bunker, then ministering to his needs…

“STOP,” shouted Cas, and the strangled voice was foreign to him, so loud it hurt his own ears, and perhaps Dean’s too, for he jumped violently and stared mutely at Cas.

“Let me GO!” Cas yelled in that same foreign voice, shoving hysterically at Dean’s hands, which still gripped his under the water. “You don’t care about me! You don’t love me!”

Dean dropped his hands in shock, and Cas jerked away from him, turning his back. Added to this list of his pains now was an intense swelling in his throat and behind his eyes, accompanied by a hysterical uprising of emotion about everything Dean had ever done to him, and a few things Cas was pretty sure he hadn’t done. Water spilled from his eyes, and Cas realized that he wept for the first time. Once he started, he could not seem to stop.

“Whoa… whoa, Cas. Hey,” Dean was saying. Then he seemed to be caught by something. He looked startled and… embarrassed? Cas still wasn’t great at reading human expressions, especially not with his eyes streaming so constantly.

“Love? I… look, Cas, we don’t…” He was definitely embarrassed, and this made Cas angrier than ever; though he didn’t comprehend the emotions clearly at all, they just kept building.

Cas tried to shrug Dean off when he placed a hand on his shoulder, but the touch sent such waves of comfort and need through him that he couldn’t. “Calm down—” Dean began.

“I CAN’T,” Cas shouted, and noted how much higher and thinner his voice sounded than usual. “I _hate_ this. I HATE IT!” he screamed, and his eyes and nose were running in earnest now, a veritable waterfall.

Dean took hold of him, shook him slightly. Cas cringed, expecting violence, but Dean’s touch grounded him somehow, allowed him to get some air into his aching lungs.

Then Dean embraced him.

“I’m sorry, Cas,” came the rough voice, muffled against Cas’s shoulder. “I’m sorry. Man, I… I am the worst friend. You’re right. I…” He cleared his throat, and seemed unable to continue. “C’mon, man,” he said finally, rubbing Cas’s shoulders soothingly. “Let me help you.”

“I can’t get warm,” Cas whimpered pitifully. He knew he sounded pathetic, but there seemed to be not one thing he could do about it.

Dean frowned with concern, then pressed his hand to Cas’s forehead. The tenderness of the gesture, along with the painful cold of Dean’s hand, made Cas moan aloud. Dean arched his eyebrow at him, and up close like this, the expression made Cas’s heart flip strangely. 

Dean drew a cloth from his pocket and wiped Cas’s face gently, removing the snot and tears. “You’re running a temperature,” he said. “OK, that’s it. I’m puttin’ you to bed. This wound might be infected, you lost a lot of blood, and what you need is rest and penicillin, OK?”

“But I love _you,”_ Cas said out of nowhere, as Dean took him by the arm and led him out of the room.

Dean froze. Cas felt his grip on his arm tighten, heard him swallow. But then he merely started walking again, ready to let it pass.

Cas _wasn’t._ “I love you,” he repeated, watching Dean’s face carefully. “Why don’t you love me?”

“Didn’t say I didn’t,” Dean growled, his voice at its most gruff, sounding like a bass gravel-mixer. He avoided Cas’s eye so assiduously that his head was turned as far away as possible, looking almost behind them as he walked Cas down the hall.

Cas was not going to let this go. “You said ‘we don’t.’ You and I, or you and Sam? ‘Don’t’ what?”

Dean was silent for a long moment. Under all his burgeoning hurts and the flurry of emotion that he couldn’t control, Cas was surprised, and pleased. He had expected Dean to explode at him, to tell him to shut up. Maybe being sick and wounded had its advantages.

“You and me. Uh, or… me and Sam. I meant we don’t say it. We don’t talk like that. It’s just… assumed.”

Cas was quiet for a moment as Dean opened a door and led him to a bed. “So I may assume that you love me,” he said finally. 

Dean went still again, just as he was urging Cas to lie down on the bed. His face was very close to Cas’s. Cas was sure that he would let him go and stand up, but he didn’t. He kept his grip on Cas’s arm as Cas lay down obediently, then touched Cas’s face very gently with his other hand, running his thumb over his cheekbone.

Cas’s heart was racing, but he was fading. His wound, the flood of emotion, the tears, and even the short walk to the bedroom had drained the last of his strength. But he struggled against the dark tide of unconsciousness that was rising up to claim him, desperate to stay in this moment with Dean.

He was able to stay just long enough to feel, miraculously, the plump, sweet press of lips to his, brief and immeasurably precious, and to hear, whispered tenderly against his lips, “Yeah, Cas. You can assume that.”

~The End~


End file.
